Drawing on a three-year post-critical ethnography, this volume counters deficit-based notions of disability to present a new social and dialogic theory of thinking and learning for students with significant support needs. Dismantling ideas around ableism/disableism, Social and Dialogic Thinking and Learning offers a uniquely theoretical and conceptual contribution to special education and capability research. Illustrating how students exhibit varied practical, social, and creative abilities, possess agency and perform identity, chapters present a challenge to the restrictive ways in which disability is constructed through prescriptive forms of teacher-student interaction and instruction. The text ultimately offers a powerful re-imagining of how educators and researchers can perceive, observe, and respond to students beyond current institutional and cultural norms. This text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in inclusion and special educational needs, disability studies, and the theories of learning more broadly. Those specifically interested in educational psychology and the study of severe, profound, and multiple learning difficulties will also benefit from this book.

This book offers the first collection of international academic writing on the topic of teaching assistants. It serves as an indicative summary of current research and thinking in this field and as a point of departure for future research and development. With contributions from leading researchers, the book draws together empirical work on the deployment and impact of teaching assistants from various perspectives and from a range of methodological approaches. It highlights and celebrates the vital everyday contributions teaching assistants make to their schools and their communities: from their role within classrooms, to their moment-by-moment interactions with pupils and teachers. The book examines the effect that teaching assistants can have on pupils’ learning and wellbeing, and considers issues of over-dependence on classroom paraprofessionals and the unintended consequences to which this can lead. Bringing together work from a journal special issue with brand-new and updated chapters, the contributions offer insight into the liminal space between educator, caregiver, behaviour manager, and facilitator of learning and of peer relations, which characterizes the teaching assistant role. This timely and important book will be essential reading for academics, researchers, and students interested in special educational needs, disability, and inclusion, and those interested in the wider topic of paraprofessionals in labour markets.

This book draws on an extensive international literature and policy context, from a wide range of fields of enquiry, to challenge the orthodoxies and systemic issues that serve to marginalise children and young people and lead the way for schools to become more equitable, inclusive and compassionate in their practice. With a particular focus on children with social, emotional and behavioural/mental health needs, it critiques policy and practice as they pertain to behaviour management and school discipline in the UK and the USA, and offers alternative perspectives based on collaborative and relational approaches to promoting positive behaviour and building community. Each chapter features reflection points to provoke discussion as well as offering additional suggested reading, culminating in a discussion of the role of school leaders in leading for social justice. Ultimately, this book will be of benefit to scholars, researchers and students working in the fields of behaviour management, inclusion and special needs education, and education, policy and politics more broadly. It will also offer substantial appeal to education professionals, school leaders and those with a locus on the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people.

This book examines the role that technologies play in the lives of adults with learning disabilities. It analyses how design and support practices can be used to support access to technology in ways that can enhance opportunities and life experiences. Drawing on international literature and the author’s own research, the book considers what we know about past and present practices of supporting adults with learning disabilities to use technologies. It outlines how support practices can offer opportunities to overcome digital inequalities, offering a framework of core beliefs and knowledge that can inform future initiatives. The book has a particular focus on technologies, policies, practitioner communities and the characteristics of support practice. It also highlights the potential of people with learning disabilities, the potential of technology and the potential of the environment to support technology use. This important book will be highly relevant reading for academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the field of special educational needs and disabilities, digital education and learning technologies, inclusive education and social work.

The International Handbook on Self-study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices is of interest to teacher educators, teacher researchers and practitioner researchers. This volume: -offers an encyclopaedic review of the field of self-study; -examines in detail self-study in a range of teaching and teacher education contexts; -outlines a full understanding of the nature and development of self-study; -explores the development of a professional knowledge base for teaching through self-study; -purposefully represents self-study through research and practice; -illustrates examples of self-study in teaching and teacher education.

The need for teachers who have both the knowledge and the skills to teach students in special education, especially students who are emergent bilinguals, is more critical today than ever before. Assumptions about the assurances outlined in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) have led to practices that have limited the scope of opportunities for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students with disabilities. This book examines the intent of special education policy, challenges existing systems, and explores the promise of using biography-driven instruction to transform students’ learning and enhance their personal growth and community life. With a focus on inclusive practices for working with CLD students with disabilities and their families, the book examines decision-making processes for placement, access, instruction, assessment, and evaluation. The authors show how inclusionary practices create contexts and conditions for teachers to foster their students’ academic abilities through authentic cariño and an ecology of care. Book Features: Elucidates the challenges faced by educators and support personnel as they navigate and prioritize the needs of CLD students with disabilities in inclusive classrooms. Discloses the outdated, politically driven, inequitable, and inconsequential educational opportunities often afforded to CLD students receiving special services. Provides a framework for creating learning opportunities grounded in the six principles of IDEA and the personal and academic biography of learners and their families. Supports teachers and other staff to maximize four interrelated facets of the CLD student biography: sociocultural, linguistic, cognitive, and academic. Explores the multiple meanings of inclusion and academic engagement at the intersection of IDEA and biography-driven instruction.

Enhancing Classroom-based Talk provides an overview of the major research and theoretical perspectives that underpin the development of classroom-based talk. It outlines specific dialogic strategies and elaborates on the key role that teachers play in promoting interactions, challenging thinking and scaffolding the learning of students. While it is important to know how different dialogic approaches can enhance students’ interactions and learning and the effects they have on students’ social, emotional and cognitive development, it is also important to understand how students’ interactions promote understanding and learning during small group discussions. Throughout the book, teachers will be shown how to embed different dialogic approaches in their classrooms to promote discourse, with chapters covering: Interest in classroom-based talk The teacher’s role in promoting dialogue in the classroom Dialogic approaches to teaching Strategies to promote students’ interactions, thinking and learning Help seeking and help giving behaviours Creating environments that promote classroom-based talk Enhancing Classroom-based Talk will be a valuable asset to all those concerned with promoting classroom-based talk, as well as postgraduate students, teachers and academics who are regularly called upon to assist in developing classroom interventions that provide for the academic and social needs of students.

Educational inequalities have strongly impacted disadvantaged and underservedpopulations such us indigenous, Roma, migrant children, students with disabilities,and those affected by poverty. A wide array of research has contributed toexplaining the mechanisms and effects of inequalities in the achievement patterns,dropout rates, disengagement in the school experiences of children and youthtraditionally excluded. Research also suggests the negative consequences for childdevelopment – including cognitive, language, and social–emotional functioning – ofpoverty and lack of quality education in the early years. Consequently, the currentunequal access to optimal learning environments for every single child to succeedin education and to have a better life perpetuates the exclusion and neglects theright to education for those minorities. This Research Topic aims at moving beyondcauses and shed light upon effective solutions by providing successful pathways forintegration and inclusion of the learners most heavily affected. Scholars worldwide are looking for successful actions with children, youth, andcommunities of learners historically underserved to overcome educational andsocial exclusion. These transformative approaches go beyond the deficit thinkingand are grounded in theories, empirical evidence, and multidisciplinary interventionsoriented towards achieving social impact, which refers to the extent to which thoseactions have contributed to improve a societal challenge. The international networkof “Schools as Learning Communities” is advancing knowledge on deepening andexpanding the impact of what has been defined as Successful Educational Actions(SEAs); that is, those interventions that improve students’ achievement and socialcohesion and inclusion in many diverse contexts, regardless the socioeconomic,national, and cultural environment of schools. Drawing on the evidence generated by this network of researchers to address the globalchallenge of inequality by studying educational actions oriented towards achievingsocial impact and potentially transferrable to other contexts, this Research Topic aimsat deepening on this approach. In short, our purpose is that the contributions includedin this Research Topic contribute to reduce educational and social inequalities andespecially benefit those populations most in need.

Learning to teach involves hard work and careful preparation. To become an effective teacher requires pedagogical and subject knowledge, an understanding of your pupils and how they learn, and the confidence to respond to dynamic classroom situations. Learning to Teach in the Secondary School is the market leading text for all undergraduate, postgraduate and school-based routes to qualified teacher status. It offers an in-depth and practical introduction to the knowledge, skills and understanding needed to become a confident and effective teacher. With a focus on evidence-based practice, the book includes a wealth of examples to demonstrate how to successfully apply theory to practice, and how to critically analyse your practice to maximise pupil learning. This 7th edition is fully updated in light of the latest initiatives, evidence and research in the field, offering comprehensive coverage, unit by unit, of the key concepts and skills addressed on initial teacher education courses in preparation for work in schools. The wide range of pedagogical features support both university based work - including that up to Masters Level - and school-based initial teacher education, and are designed to help you develop those qualities that lead to good practice and a successful future in education. Written by expert practitioners, thirty-six essential units include: • adopting a positive approach to managing behaviour to support learning • ways pupils learn • planning lessons, units of work and schemes of work • motivating pupils • assessment • inclusion and special educational needs • using ICT and digital technologies • pupil grouping, progression and differentiation • managing time, workload and stress • getting your first teaching post. Learning to Teach in the Secondary School provides practical help and guidance for many of the situations and potential challenges you are faced with in school. Supported by the Learning to Teach Subjects in the Secondary School Series, it is an essential purchase for every aspiring secondary school teacher.